"With the large volume of photos, videos and music that consumers create and carry around, a high-capacity memory card is a must-have component of today's smartphone," said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk's president, in a statement. "This is the highest-capacity card of its type, and SanDisk is pleased to be the first to ship such an advanced product. This marks yet another important first in our innovative history in the flash memory industry."

SanDisk said 32GB cards are already needed by many users as smartphones increasingly serve as mobile offices, and incorporate music players, cameras, video recorders, GPS devices and gateways to the mobile Internet. The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card, SanDisk noted, can store enough music to play music on more than 35 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York before repeating a single song.

SanDisk microSDHC cards are also available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card is available now on SanDisk.com as well as on US and European e-commerce. Worldwide retail availability is expected to follow next month.